A Comparison of Ambulatory Care and Emergency Department Encounters as Data Sources for Detection of Clusters of Lower Gastrointestinal Illness

We sought to compare ambulatory care (AC) and emergency department (ED) data for the detection of clusters of lower gastrointestinal illness, using AC and ED data and AC+ED data combined, from two geographically separate health plans participating in the National Bioterrorism Syndromic Surveillance Demonstration Program [1].